MASTERMIND – Compassionate Collaboration at its Very Best

Brent Smith (00:00): Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Change Your Heart Podcast. I am Brent, and I'm here with Giulio today. It's just such a wonderful opportunity to meet people from around the world. I am here connected actually connected and have goosebumps right now because I'm talking to a blessed soul in Florence, in Italy. And it's so wonderful to have this technology, have this ability to connect like this. Hello Giulio, thank you for being here.

Giulio Ayrton Gonnelli (00:36): Wow. Thank you. Thank you for having me together with you. And as you said, the blissful technology, technological possibilities we have today allow two souls to connect virtually, but still with intention as strong as, possible to bring something up. To your audience in this case to anyone who's listening and I am looking forward to it. Thank you. Thank you really. It's a pleasure.

Brent Smith (01:07): I'm looking forward for, you know, all our worlds to just collide to come together. And I watched something last week, during the week that you put out something and you started it with celebration, and I really wanted to touch on that because it does feel like a celebration. And, you know, if you could tell me your thoughts about celebration.

Giulio Ayrton Gonnelli (01:37): Celebration, well, let me start with this. First of all, Sunday is for me the day where I intentionally celebrate. So to have from you that you want me to share about celebration is like already a beautiful conjunction, a certain serendipity let's call it. In fact, in my community, the community that I'm creating with the people. I always say that celebration as a meaning like the origin of the word is just coming together. The origins of the word, celebration, just refers to a group of people coming together. And when you come together with someone, you have a reason, right, then there's must be a common ground for people to just come together. And that's what celebration means. It doesn't mean necessarily throwing a party or these kind of things, it is just coming together.

Giulio Ayrton Gonnelli (02:48): And so this moment for me, this is a celebration of the coming together with you to celebrate, I'm celebrating with you. And then the question comes, what, so the reason why we decided to come together, what we are celebrating inevitably, and this is just an insight that when I found about this origin of the word celebration, it struck me and it gave a whole new meaning to the fact that I am celebrating life. And we are continuously in this moment of celebrating, especially when we come back to ourselves, that's when self celebration comes. And, this is, this is my thought, my sharing for you about celebration and about its origin and how to bring it into your everyday, by celebrating yourself, coming together with yourself.

Brent Smith (03:49): That's what I was going to ask you. How, how do you picture, what do you see about celebrating with yourself?

Giulio Ayrton Gonnelli (03:59): A tremendously beautiful picture.

Brent Smith (04:04): Is it just like the smile, just a smile coming out of nowhere? Is it the, is it the well it's coming together, right. So it's coming together with just being present with being...

Giulio Ayrton Gonnelli (04:20): Yes, let me just drop a very short background to what I do, to what I've been doing so that I can properly put out this message about self celebration and coming together with yourself. I'm a yoga teacher, I'm a meditation teacher. I've been into these very, very spiritual side of my life for now seven years. A bit more than seven years. And what I found from my perspective is that we have different elements. We have different parts, and you're truly fulfilled. You're truly powerful. You are opening your wings and be able to hold the word. And elevate it uplifted when these parts coherently align and come together and here it goes, they come together. When you're able to make them come together, magic happens, everything happens, everything and beyond happens, this kind of conversation happens.

Giulio Ayrton Gonnelli (05:41): These, your business start flourishing, your relationship starts peeling off every doubt and challenge that it was having everything right. And so this is what I see in celebrating myself inevitably as my comes out, because that's the piece in it. There's a, there's that peaceful state of, I mean, I'm okay. Everything is aligned. I'm okay. Lack of money, but that's okay. It's okay, I'm served. I lack of friends, but that's okay. There's no lack, and now I use the word lack, but actually in this moment, this is not in my life, but that's okay. I will rephrase myself. Okay. So this is how I see celebrating myself is truly understanding that the parts are united and reminding myself that there's one, it just needs to be aligned. That's a celebration.

Brent Smith (06:58): Yeah. And that's what I see what we're doing right now by getting together. What, Giulio brought us together? A little bit of background is, we're both on a Facebook group and this Facebook group is put on by this man named Vishen, and Vichen wrote a book called Buddha and the badass. And so Giulio and I, both purchased this book and joined the group for this book just to, so everybody can be together and and learn and dig within themselves and do these exercises, these practices that he has in the book, and we could all do it and share it together. And so I immediately felt, connected with you when you had a video on and we had, this practice of writing a vision, writing your vision of what you want to bring to the world.

Brent Smith (08:05): And we had the opportunity of sharing and reading each other's vision, and it was such an awesome connection. And it really gave the fuel to actually restart, Change Your Heart Podcast and to really have the fuel, to bring awesome stuff, bring what we're passionate about, bring or the celebration, bring the celebration to everyone and being able to come together. And so it's interesting, the ways that all it takes is just somebody sharing and somebody going, let's do something with it, right. And that's what came up in your videos. And I would love to talk about a little bit is action, your desire for action, your desire, to create something out of this, out of these collaborations, out of these connections out of these things, tell me about action.

Giulio Ayrton Gonnelli (09:10): Action is for me, interesting enough. I'm not always coming from the perspective of yoga and using it as a standpoint to move forward in my conversations. But today it's quite time and natural, and I believe in flow and intuition. So action, when it comes to yoga and scriptures is one of the actual translations of karma. Okay. And karma , in fact, it's planting a seed that then will sprout of fruit. And you know, you do something, you get, you reap the fruits of what you've done. This is the very barbaric explanation of karma, please, anyone who is listening to this. Don't jump, very of course, simplified version of what karma is, but fundamentally, karma is action. And so it's taking action and making things happen. There's one thing I'm having, having being raised as an Italian, as an Italian child, uh, adolescents that struck Italy from 1994, which is my birth date.

Giulio Ayrton Gonnelli (10:40): And, for 20 years, there was Berlusconi. And I'm not here talking about anything bad, or judging, the operate of Silvio Berlusconi as the president. But what I noticed in my adolescence, in my moment of fire, cause you're an adolescent, there's some fire going on in there. And that's the period where your third chakra from 14 to 21, is building up. So your fire, your inner fire is building up in that moment. And everything. What I was hearing was it's the government's fault. It's their fault, we're in this condition, we hate this condition, it feels real bad in this condition, but it's there for pointing the finger, pointing fingers, blaming a blame game with no action.

Giulio Ayrton Gonnelli (11:45): It built within me that need of action. Because in that period, I was escaping from this situation with drugs, with frustration. I also got adopted. So there was this adolescent transformation where I was bringing out his emotion deep in my subconscious. And so I guess need to take action and Compassionate Collaboration which is a principle that came out of intuition of meditation, of a silence retreat. And then I decided to put these two words together, Compassionate Collaboration, for me is for me the catalyzer for compassionate action for action, which is inclusive. So action needs to be inclusive. Action needs to be decisive, but not harmful. In fact. And when you comes to share your dream, as you did, you shared your dream, you shared your vision in a paper.

Giulio Ayrton Gonnelli (13:02): It was like heat. I felt it in my whole body. I was like, Whoa, this guy is taking action. As simple as that. And as you did, you called me out to do that. I was like, I would love to share, I haven't shared it in here. I will do that. And I did. And look at what happened. We were moving energies where we're creating some sort of a feedback, right? So that's what action is. And there's a tremendous need for action. Now, time to talk about climate change or whatsoever, that's now the moment to come together and celebrate the resolution of the problems we have, which is done nothing but through action.

Brent Smith (13:56): That is wonderful way to put it, we're coming together to celebrate it, celebrate the action that we're taking the time. This is all happening. The things that are happening are it's, it's a falling away and we're just, we're celebrating with what's new, the new connections that we're making, the new collaborations. And, you put it in such a beautiful way. I want to ask, what have you always felt like action was something that you felt strongly about and taken on? Or do you feel that it's sort of been a challenge in your life and you're just trying to create it now?

Giulio Ayrton Gonnelli (14:38): I like this question. It makes me look deeply into, into what my struggle was. And I would say probably, I was not always strong in action. I was not always strong in action. I was more afraid of taking it because of the conditions that it could create. And so I was a bit refraining and holding back from taking action. I always believed that action needs to be taken as far as I remember first you are a kid. So you don't really think about it. But as I remember I started thinking about it and these whole environments, right? We are defined out of our environment. And what is important for you as a value comes from your pains as Vishen in his book, Vishen, Lakhiani, in Buddha and the Badass, he beautifully...

Giulio Ayrton Gonnelli (15:52): explains, it would be one of my values. It is included in my value of transcendence, of moving past and beyond the state I'm in right now. I didn't have that at the beginning. And, it came up in the last, it came out in the last five years. I saw the need of action, stating that I hone into that need and after a while, I realized that I was creating plans and visioning something. A change for the world. What I still call my dream for the world. And after a while I recognize this is not going to happen unless I take some action. And then it's, when you meet people who are willing to support you, come together with you, collaborate with you and embrace your challenge which is of out of any kind. It could be in my case, was I needed to come out of my downward spiral, of addictions that ended on six years ago, my beginning of my twenties.

Brent Smith (17:28): So the last five years, the last five years, when you started thinking about it and started really trying to find how you're going to bring this action, how you're going to bring your vision to the world. You found a beautiful partner Camila, and you created a beautiful young son, Ezra Leon. Yes. He is three months, you said, right? Yes. So what, I don't have any children, but I just could imagine how your change or your focus on action, on what you're trying to bring obviously changed during the past few months Could you tell me a little bit, I know it's a big question, but as far as your focus and your action, when your son was born, what has come up that changed?

Giulio Ayrton Gonnelli (18:45): So my son was born on the 25th of April, this year, and we were being in Italy, we were right in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis. So we were under full lock down. We're in the full of it. In that period, I was stepping out actually. So I would say that it concretized into that, and on this one, parentheses, I would say that as soon that the action that my son was born when we realized that, the conception had happened. So we realized, you're pregnant. Okay. I'm the father now. And then you reality, nine months of preparation of natural preparation passed. And one day he was born and when he was born, it made concrete and real my transition from a business, which I was appointed as a CEO for, to my actual business like, being that business birthed from my visions.

Giulio Ayrton Gonnelli (20:12): If I had to find one thing in particular, it would be that one, he was born. And when he was born, I had twins. I had him as early on and Compassionate Collaboration, my vision becoming real, finding partners, starting to pull together everyone and creating the Masterminds network, getting ready for the launch by 2020 and everything. So that was the actual, taking action on something that I've been meditating upon and pondered for a long time, I bought the domain a few years before and I didn't use it. I was using it for my coaching practice, pretty much. I was using it for my self work. So the coaching practice was self awareness coaching. And the domain I was using was compassionatecollaboration.com. I was still looking at it like, it doesn't really match, but it will come up in the right way. And when he was born, he brought me that clarity like, action. That's my dream. That's all I believe about being adopted. I suffered from separation. So probably my strongest without probably my strongest point is unity. Bring it together. That separation shouldn't happen between two human beings and we are so separated. So I started taking action on uniting, humanity.

Brent Smith (22:11): Uniting humanity is awesome. Compassionate Collaboration, your word today is Mastermind. And this came up with your son's birth, that mastermind. I feel we're going to talk about it right now, but I feel that is your, the basis, your action in this, in this compassionate collaboration. And so tell me about mastermind. Explain it a little bit and then we'll get in deeper with it.

Giulio Ayrton Gonnelli (22:53): Mastermind game came through for me into my life for the first time as a word, literally as a word in 2016. After a program, after a few studies, a business coach from San Francisco, Even Bag. And he brought it up many times. He brought up in particular, the book, Napoleon Hill's book, think and grow rich, widely known self help book. And he speaks about mastermind. And since then I realized that I wanted to have these group of individuals who strive and thrive for each and every one's success, growth and elevation. And that is a mastermind that is a mastermind, basically you and I bringing our minds together. And there's a synergy in this unity. There's a synergy, which is not just your mind plus my mind is not, Brent and Giulio, it is Brent times Giulio, or is Giulio at the Brent Power, Or Brent at the Giulio power, that way bigger than the sum of the two?

Giulio Ayrton Gonnelli (24:21): And this is what a mastermind is. So since then, since 2016, I desired to have this group of peers. It wasn't, the body was their thing in, in ancient Rome in Latin is the first, the best among equals. So it's continuously, there's the best. Therefore they come up and there's the best one, therefore down there's come up. And that's the idea? So I chose the word mastermind today because lately everything is a bit going around this word for me. I'm in a mastermind with my wife and for how little he can express himself through words, threshold, or understandable words, by I am in a mastermind with my son. The mastermind is collaborative. Cause you need to be into an intention of collaboration to be in a mastermind, just to be contributing to others, struggles, resolutions, and you will bring solutions as well. And then it's compassionate, cause you're still there willing to help the other, wearing the shoes of this other person to suffer the other person's struggle to elevate it. That's compassion, com-patos, to be with the pathos, with the sufferance and feelings of the other person. And so that's compassion, that's collaborative and that's surely transcendental.

Giulio Ayrton Gonnelli (26:15): You're multiplying yourself times the other person that's surely beyond yourself. And I believe humanity includes educational models, financial structures, the economics, which is based on scarcity, first-class in a business school, is about how you will be trained and taught to register scarcity. I don't know if I'm allowed to say words, which are, but that's a big BS. Yeah. That's a big scarcity. I mean, there's enough for everyone. And so I believe that in a mastermind, you solve these problems. You are actually uplifting, elevating, grading all of these aspects.

Brent Smith (27:30): That is awesome. I have something to say about it. Cause mastermind is a newer word for me. I would say in the last six months it started coming up and I actually took something with Dean Grasiozi he's into creating masterminds and into doing this and the tidbit that I got from him, so many wonderful things that I got from him, but something I truly felt in my heart after doing it, was a total realization that there's room for everyone to be abundant there's room for every single person, all 8 billion, a trillion, however many on this earth can all contribute their amount of time that they've been on this earth and creating things to come up with a powerful vision statement in a way that everyone else can learn from everyone else can be.

Brent Smith (28:28): And there is room for everyone to have anything that they desire. And that was a true realization. And that really fired me up. I really look forward to working with you as far as masterminds are concerned and to create something awesome. But something that was super special for me, as far as mastermind's are concerned, is that everyone can learn off everyone and there's abundance for everyone. And there is no more this idea of top down of people having and the have nots are going away. And that is truly what I feel out of the word mastermind.

Giulio Ayrton Gonnelli (29:18): Having a rush of beauty. I have energy going through my physical body. Yes, I fully embrace what you just shared. And it is the essence of mastermind. You know, as a mission Compassionate Collaboration as a vision it envisions a world where competition is no more a thing, because there's no need to compete over something which is not scarce, but abandoned. And so shifting humanity from competition to collaboration is Compassionate Collaboration, more founded mission. And we envisioned that. That's why, yes, masterminds are something that should become mainstream schools. Schools should do masterminds, how it teaches humbleness, what you just said. You can learn anything from anyone and everyone has something to teach you and to learn from you. So should you hold back from giving what you have, and should you hold back from opening your hands and arms to receive what you can receive from everyone. Only in a fearful and obsolete way of seeing our society. This is it. I don't know if there's something else.

Brent Smith (31:05): So let's turn this into action a little bit. Let's really so, Compassionate Collaboration. I have, I think the first thing with masterminds with doing this is it's so easy for me to find the good in you, Giulio, or the special talent in somebody else, like my sister for example. I see, and I feel her talent, right? But mine I'm like, Whoa, Whoa, I have nothing to share. Right. I have, I have nothing to give. Right. And so it creates a weird dynamic because I feel and understand the power of collaboration of mastermind. Right. And so I tell my sister, we can do something with this. We can do something with the special ability that you have this talent, this knowledge that you have created off your past experiences. She thinks like, Oh, no, I can't, you know, I couldn't share what I wanted. And so what is, what is your job Giulio, to encourage people, to gather them to really, to be attracted, to lift each other up and to find that.

Giulio Ayrton Gonnelli (32:33): Okay, that is, let me say very fundamental aspect, a very fundamental point. It's a core of what you need to do in order to catalyze change, right? In order to make sure that this new approach happens. And it comes down to self awareness, comes down to that self awareness. So if there's one thing, of course, everyone needs to jump in the meeting before actually being able to say, I have nothing to offer here, or I do have something to offer. So that's the first requirement. So to speak like you meet your need to be willing to put yourself into, into some game in order to play. And this only comes through the demonstration of the fact that many are having breakthroughs. Many are just opening their hands today. This is something...

Giulio Ayrton Gonnelli (33:45): For example, in this moment, I can only talk about and say, Hey, look around you, look around yourself. Humanity, many humans are coming together, are deciding to help one another. Instead of fighting over scarce resources, many humans are doing this. And this is probably the very first thing that I would do would be saying that like, Hey, this is happening. Have a look at it. And it brings awareness to it. And then reminding, the second part would go towards, look, you have too have something that I do not have. And I was speaking first-person because we're going to speak. Yeah, you can give them something. I don't know. I'm talking about me. I mean, you, Brent, you have an incredible knowledge around what you would be doing as a job. If I just come from that direction, for example, I could take it from many directions.

Giulio Ayrton Gonnelli (34:55): Right. But you have some knowledge coming from air traffic control. I do not have it. For sure you do have something to give me. Do I need It, maybe not in this moment, so I'm not there to take it, but for sure, I know that you have something at least one thing, and we have an infinite potential of things that others don't have. And so it would be to bring their awareness to that part, as a next step. And then hopefully this gives them the chill of saying, alright let's try it, let's take action. Because when they are doing that without other five, six, seven, 10, 100 individuals who are just there celebrating and saying, you know celebrating, but coming together, helping one another of getting something out of there, by just the form of giving, you'll get something out of it.

Giulio Ayrton Gonnelli (36:06): You always get something out of it. And I would end with an example. There was this client of mine. He decided to drop his current path on university while having a job on the side. And he decided to drop the university. And he came to me and like, I don't know if I'm able to do this. And that it's like, okay, we did a couple of sessions. We realized that he was able to do that. He jumped into it. Then he got into some masterminds meetings. And in the first meeting, I remember him saying, I do not have, chatting to me in private, in the chat, in the Zoom, he was saying, I do not have anything to offer. Cause I am not yet a business owner. I'm just planning to start a business. So I don't have anything to offer. And I was like, man, be here, look at what happens now. And so things started rolling and a woman had a technological issue. She had technical difficulties with her laptop with some stuff, and she couldn't get their her job going without support. Guess what he was an expert of. He was there.

Giulio Ayrton Gonnelli (37:41): He was there. He offered her, look, I can offer my support so we can, so they got through a coach. He helped her moving forward past that wall. And she could, deliver on her business and he was not a business owner and he had nothing to offer, but when he was there present and willing to give, he got it.

Brent Smith (38:07): Got the opportunity.

Giulio Ayrton Gonnelli (38:09): He got the opportunity to give his energy. His self esteem increased automatically because by helping someone else, like being able to have someone else, our self esteem increases, we see that it's possible. And actually he got helped by them. That was the example he got in with the idea, I have nothing to offer. But if you're open up exponential, infinite possibilities to be helped and to help, to support and get support. Right? Yeah.

Brent Smith (38:42): Giulio, that is an awesome time to wrap up this episode, but I know this is going to continue on and on and on, and we're gonna, we're gonna create some awesome stuff together. And with everyone listening and joining us during this, we're going to create masterminds together. We're going to really figure it out together. I'm going to ask you Giulio, to write a post that we'll put on the website as well, to further explain your vision and your idea of what you're creating with compassionatecollaboration.com. And this will be a start of this and your format when people are attracted to this, to sharing and to receiving this help and support from each other that will be the place to go will be what you have created and what I've created. And we all have room to grow together. And so if you could do that, I would love it. And we will just continue and we'll create new stuff together. Sound good?

Giulio Ayrton Gonnelli (39:58): 100%. This is the spirit I love embracing, it feels good right away when you open up and you have someone opening up as a response as a feedback, cause you see there's a resonance in infrequency and in vibration. You did and look what happens. So to anyone out there, just open up, be giving, just be giving, open up your abilities. Cause the world needs it. Look at what may happen. There's room, there's room to grow together, not against one another, but together. So thank you Brent for having me here, celebrating with you,

Brent Smith (40:51): Giulio. It was so awesome to celebrate with you and I got chills and it's so cool. Thank you so much and I love you. I look forward to masterminding with you through, for the rest of our lives and just everyone growing together. Thank you everybody for joining the Change Your Heart Podcast, until next time, I don't know, just be, just be happy. Enjoy, share, love, support. Thank you so much you guys I'll talk to you soon. Bye.